


you still sleep in the bed with me, my jewelry and my baby teeth

by copperiisulfate



Series: Comrades [2]
Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Relationships, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Established Relationship, Multi, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-06 22:21:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4238718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fushimi flirts with the idea of permanence, and it's like pulling teeth, wherein both the teeth and the pulling are his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. nothing without pretend

**Author's Note:**

> So _we'll bury our ghosts so deep they'll never find them_ was not supposed to get a sequel but then chapter 4 of Days of Blue happened and this has been brewing at snail pace ever since; technically, both can stand and be read independently but some of the same themes run across and this became more of an overarching Blue Clan story disguised as a Fushimi-centered character/relationships-study somehow. Semi-canon divergent after the events of season 1 with vague cherry-picked throwbacks to newer canon.
> 
> Title and a lot of atmospheric inspiration borrowed from Wye Oak's deadly hurricane of a track: _Civilian_

 

 

  
"I used to wonder why everyone worked in pairs here," Hidaka says, to the ceiling more than anything, because he can't sleep and this is the kind of thing that happens when he can't sleep. "Everyone fights in pairs, lives in pairs, essentially functions in pairs. Everyone, except for the Captain, Lieutenant, and you." 

They are in Fushimi's room this time, less of a mess and inconveniencing roommates and all. It's been a long night, three high-grade violent strains captured, with fortunately next to no collateral damage if you don't count Gotou's black eye – yet another reason they're in Fushimi's room instead. 

Fushimi clicks his tongue, says, "Always did better on my own." 

In response to this, Hidaka props himself up on an elbow. It's in a swift moment of curiousity, which he will later also probably remember as incredibly stupid and audacious, that he says, "I always thought HOMRA worked in pairs as well. You had a partner once, didn't you?"

The name of the clan alone is enough to make Fushimi bristle, or maybe it's the other word.

" _Partnership_ ," he says, tries and fails to keep his voice level, "was too structured a concept for that clusterfuck. We stuck with who we gelled with. Mostly, there were four of them at the top, at the core, pretending to play house. The rest of us got by with whoever and whatever we could."

It's not much but it's so much more than Fushimi gives most days.

There's hardly ever much more than some variation of sidesteps and half-conversations when it comes to this. And that's fine, more than fine, but Hidaka's never sure if he should regret asking, never sure if he'll say something someday and it will be too much, will take them five steps back for every slow step forward.

  

*

 

Absently, Fushimi thinks about it in the morning, when his bed is empty and the pillow next to his smells like standard-issue stock shampoo and a trace of Hidaka's obnoxious hair product.

There's a laugh and a half and it's bitter in the air.

_Yeah—no,_ he thinks. 

There are days where he can’t distract himself from the thought of all the years wasted, the memory of looking over his shoulder, calling out into the dark, expecting an answer. He hates that he still has days—no, minutes—no, fractions of seconds, fewer and farther between but still present, still persistent–where he has to stop himself before doing it all over again.

And this is when the mark burns.

It's a dull, dull ache that hasn't acted up since the Red King's death but it's an ache that spreads now, all the way to the tips of his fingers.

He closes his eyes and reaches for the familiar spot by his clavicle, balls his hand into a fist when it gets there.

He sits up and puts his feet on the ground, tells himself to get up and out of his head and  _move_.

 

*

 

Somehow, it's the same day that his feet take him to a bar, which now has a ‘Closed’ sign dangling on its front door.

He swears under his breath, at the sign, at himself, at Suoh Mikoto for coming into his life and maybe even a little bit for leaving.

Two blocks from the bar, he runs into Kamamoto, hand in hand with Anna, who looks suddenly, startlingly older. He knows it’s his mind playing tricks on him. It hasn’t been that long, but—

"Saruhiko," she says.

And Fushimi exhales.

No one has called him that in ages. The only person who used to found him a better name. And well, he can’t say he doesn’t like the way  _traitor_  sounds, or the ring of it on Misaki's tongue.

"Sorry, Saruhiko," Anna says, with eyes that always could cut their way through everyone. Of course, he's never been a match for that. "He's not around today."

"Bar's been closed for a while," Kamamoto supplies, and before he can say anything more, Fushimi ducks out and away from it, all of it.

It starts to rain, then pour, and he stands under an overhang by a cornerstore to wait it out and check his phone, sees the three new email alerts, just as he bumps shoulders with no one other than Kusanagi Izumo who is on his way out. 

"Well, would you look at that?" Kusanagi says. "You'll live a long life. Was just thinkin’ about you."

"Not sure if that's flattering or creepy," Fushimi frowns. "You shut the bar down but Homra’s still crawling all over this neighbourhood."

Kusanagi shrugs. "I don't tell 'em what to do or what not to do. I'd say you're always welcome to the bar but it's done for, kid. Gone with her King." He blows a thin stream of smoke into the air. The line of his shoulders is lax, seemingly nonchalant, but there are lines around his eyes and something hard behind them.

"Kusanagi-san," Fushimi starts, and has absolutely no idea where he's going with this.

Kusanagi waves a hand. "He's probably around the bar anyhow or maybe even snuck inside. Does that from time to time. A sign never kept him out and he's been picking locks since before I knew him. Maybe even before you knew him.” He chuckles, soft, distracted, as if in his head, he’s someplace else. 

“It's just brick walls and not much more. Keep thinking of selling eventually but Anna's--"

"Sorry," Fushimi says, quiet.

Kusanagi laughs, a hollow sound. "Yeah, well."

The rain has let up a little and Fushimi eyes the sky, knows he should move, wants to move, but--Fushimi blinks and, sometimes, it catches up with him, all of it, and it's like a nightmare. There are times where he feels like he dodged a bullet but only just, and other times, not so much. 

Sure, his best friend hates him. Kusanagi's best friends are dead. 

 

*

 

Exhausted, he knocks on Hidaka's door, dripping wet. He knows Gotou's back in the office, buried in paperwork, and it's a bit of a blessing, maybe the biggest one today. Fushimi slumps against the door frame and Hidaka pulls him inside by the wrist almost immediately.

"Rough day?"

_Try year_ , he thinks, knows he should at least get rid of his coat because he's dripping all over Hidaka and probably tracked in water with his boots.

"I'm sorry," Hidaka says, and he's warm and he's here and he's got his fingers in Fushimi's damp hair.

He's trying even when Fushimi gives him next to nothing to go on and Fushimi doesn't know the why of it half the time, but even so—

He's glad he left. It all went to hell and part of him is just glad he left before then.

"They didn't deserve that. Any of them." He doesn't realize he's saying it out loud.

Hidaka doesn't ask, just takes some steps and sits on his bed, leaves space for Fushimi to join him if he so chooses, and says, quietly, "No one ever does."

 

*

 

It's later that night that Fushimi says it.

"His name is Misaki." Fushimi swallows, throat dry, tongue heavy. "Yata Misaki of Homra." He doesn't say,  _but you already knew that_ , and doesn't say,  _sometimes I think I'm still in love with him_ ,  _different but still there, worry that it might always be there, still burning around the edges._

Hidaka doesn't ask why he's telling him this—why  _now_ —just keeps his eyes on him while Fushimi's eyes are fixed on the ceiling. They fall shut when Hidaka reaches out for the spot above his clavicle, runs a hand over the scar, the tattoo that's not much more than scar and shadow now, and says, "I know."

_I wanted you to know--_ want _you to know,_  Fushimi  thinks, wishes it would have been cleaner, easy _—but nothing about me is clean or easy and you know that, wouldn't be here if you didn't know that._

Even then, Fushimi sometimes cannot believe that he is here at all.

 

*

 

There's another day, another battle, a group of runaway strains this time. They're stronger than lower-tier members of most other clans SCEPTER 4 has faced, destructive like the Reds, fight dirty like the Greens, and seemingly immune to everyone but Kings.

The day leaves Akiyama needing half a dozen stitches, Fuse with a dislocated shoulder, and even the Lieutenant with bruises.  It ends up with the Captain's direct involvement in combat, something that hasn’t been all that frequent since Ashinaka. Although he ultimately manages to walk away unscathed, it is slowly becoming a poorly kept secret that Captain's strength is not what it used to be.

That night, Hidaka doesn't wait for Gotou to fall asleep before he leaves their room and winds up, wordless, in Fushimi's bed. They don't quite touch beyond the necessity of sharing space. They don't speak much. Hidaka barely moves.

"The only reason I'm saying it," Fushimi sighs, "is because you spend so much time rambling. You're creeping me out."

"Sorry," Hidaka mumbles. 

It's hardly the first time their squad has taken damage. In so many ways, that is what they are here for and it is something Hidaka has more or less made peace with, but it is more, or less, depending on the day.

Depending on, he thinks, how much Kusuhara's youth and smile haunt him on that particular day. Today, it's all he can see when he closes his eyes. The worst part is that he knows. He understands.

"It just makes you think," and he surprises himself with what he says next, "this clan has fallen before," because that wasn't where this thought was supposed to go but, he supposes, where everything ends up ultimately. 

Fushimi says nothing.

"No one wants to see that happen again," Hidaka says, against the dark, "but sometimes, it's easy to remember that we aren't--that even kings aren't infallible."

 

* 

 

There is a part of Fushimi that is surprised to find he desperately needs Munakata Reisi to be infallible.

There is a part of him that wants to believe it even as he knows better.

And maybe, maybe,  _maybe_ , there's a small part of him, like a seedling, growing slow but steady, that's beginning to understand Kusuhara Takeru's unflinching resolve in the face of a bullet aimed for his king.

Fushimi doubts that he would ever do the same, not for any King, maybe not for  _anyone_ , or anyone except—

Still, he thinks he is beginning to understand.

Besides, if Munakata's Sword of Damocles falls, SCEPTER 4 will be in shambles.

Objectively, he knows that, should it happen, the recovery for the clan will be--

Not impossible, no. Slow, perhaps. Difficult, certainly.

His phone buzzes and he checks the alert: updates in the week's schedule and coordinates for the afternoon's mission.

Already, he can feel himself removing the thoughts (of that potential future, a Damocles Down, and distantly, the feeling of homelessness, yet again) from his head, and recalibrating to the present.

 

 


	2. know my thoughts (can't live with them)

 

Somehow, they have arrived at where they have arrived. It's difficult to say how. Hidaka cannot go back in time and trace the precise trajectory of it if he tried.

He holds him close when they're alone, close and tight and presses their lines into each other, and sure, there's fear in there, his own fear, that Fushimi will drift or was never really here at all, not in head or heart despite all physical evidence to the contrary, but there is also Fushimi's fear, so many of Fushimi's fears, and he holds them, or tries to, close against his heart. 

He considers himself reasonably good at his job but there are still things he is clumsy with. Fushimi makes him feel clumsy a lot of the time, often without meaning to (usually without meaning to; when he means to, it's just mostly endearing). It's always the edge of a slippery slope, falling this way or that, no right answer or easy end in sight. 

Other times, he thinks he might be on to something after all.

There's a night that Fushimi gasps out loud when Hidaka's got a hand down the waistband of his boxers and around him—except, this time, it comes out as, “ _Akira.”_

—and Hidaka’s brain and body both come to a screeching halt.

And Fushimi hisses, “Why the hell did you  _stop_?”

"You just said—"

"What could  _possibly_  be so important that—"

Hidaka shakes his head, laughs, "Nothing—never mind." 

And he's sure it was an absentminded accident at best but Hidaka can't keep the smile off his face (and will not be able to, for days after, when his mind comes back to it, often at extremely inopportune moments).

Here, he’s well aware that his hands are calloused from the years of swordplay and Fushimi's lashes flutter when Hidaka's fingers curl, his mouth opens part-way but Hidaka kisses him in time, swallows the sound between them; there's a new sort of sweetness--almost giddiness, to the motion it that Fushimi is likely too distracted to question.

 

*

 

On a day Gotou takes off for a family leave, Fushimi accompanies him on patrol.

It was not so much that they purposefully avoided this sort of thing as much as that there was never much necessity. This time, however, there's word of an especially powerful fire-type strain in one of the city blocks Hidaka and Gotou would have been assigned to and Fushimi had, in a roundabout and backhanded way, insisted upon being there.

“Besides, Fushimi-kun’s curriculum vitae had consisted of extensive experience in dealing with fire-types,” the Captain had smiled, when it was just the two of them.

Fushimi may have gone on for a long time believing, or perhaps hoping, that no one could see the way that he had changed--began to let someone creep to such an extent inside his head and his heart, for fear of exposing vulnerability, or perhaps something else, he wasn’t sure--even when everyone knew that the Captain saw everything. Still, perhaps by sheer virtue of not knowing what to do about this, Fushimi chose to do nothing at all.

It seemed inconsequential now. That they had become whatever it was that they had become was something of an open secret among the Swordsmen Division of Annex 4 and, aside from Gotou's occasional bristling, no one particularly said anything one way or the other. 

(It likely never crossed Fushimi’s mind that no one dared utter a word in his presence out of sheer terror, or if Hidaka was tormented mercilessly through sidelong innuendo behind his back, he was kind and contained enough to never say a word. 

Neither of them knew about that one time when Andy half-began to mutter something something to Fuse about whether the Captain's favourite still needed to file disclosure forms with Human Resources, the Lieutenant had said his name sharp enough to make him jump three feet in the air as he was mid-sentence and then nearly die of hypothermia from her glare alone.)

And so, Fushimi and Hidaka wound up on patrol together. Naturally, Hidaka was incapable of keeping that ridiculous grin off his face while Fushimi sighed and pretended to find him insufferable and mostly failed.

"Do you wonder if anyone's ever done it while on duty?" Hidaka says with more faux-innocence than anyone should ever be allowed.

"We are  _not--"_ Fushimi snaps, fairly sure his ears are burning

 "I wasn't suggesting that we do," Hidaka laughs, and Fushimi knows that he was definitely suggesting  _something_. "We’ve just never done patrol together before! Not alone anyway. What if we get to fight together?" And it shouldn’t be endearing, the way he is practically bursting from excitement.

Fushimi sighs, says, "I would say I would let you fend for yourself but unfortunately, as your supervising officer, it would be my fault if you get yourself killed."

Hidaka beams at him, "Well, I'd have your back too, and not just because you're my supervising officer," he says, tipping sideways and into Fushimi's space a little, the side of his head not quite touching the top of Fushimi’s but it’s a near thing.

Fushimi sometimes hates him for being so tall and swats at him but his heart really isn't into it. Besides, Hidaka's stupid grin is infectious and, if Fushimi's not careful, he's going to find himself doing something horribly unprofessional to shut him up.

But that thought is quick to disappear as is whatever trace of a smile might have been creeping at the edge of Fushimi's mouth because it falls in record time when he hears the scratch of wheels and a skateboard clacking against asphalt.

 

*

 

It’s almost like a conditioned reflex now, so thoroughly Pavlovian in nature. He meets Misaki’s eyes and his fingers itch for his knives.

Misaki barks a laugh and now has his eyes just above Fushimi’s shoulder and Fushimi feels a chill up his spine, suddenly remembering who is behind him and where they are and _when_ they are because this is not _then; this is now, and the two are different_.  

"Thought you fought solo, traitor? Guess you've gone softer, weaker. Need the blues to back you up."

And here, Fushimi can sense before he sees Hidaka stand up straighter, stretch himself out to his full height. They're not to activate their sabers even though it’s authorized for the purpose of patrol  but Hidaka’s hand reaches for it anyway.

Fushimi moves to stand between them, eyes on Misaki. He swears in his head, says, low, "You're one to talk. Your powers are next to gone." 

"Don't need 'em to take you on," Misaki grins, makes a fist. "And if your boy here wants to play, I can take you both on, no problem." 

The second to last thing Fushimi wants right now is for Hidaka to get involved.  The absolute last is for Hidaka to see him like this. 

He glances back again and Hidaka nods once, seemingly snapping himself out of whatever had come over him, gives him a look that says,  _Careful,_  and turns on his heel.

The relief is like a rush, almost crippling, and before Fushimi can think about it, there’s a ghost of flames at his fingertips, a dull burn he feels all the way up to his shoulders. This ache is familiar, the rush of adrenaline is familiar and even as he's missed it, even as his blood burns for it, Fushimi finds the rest of him catching up, finds that this fight isn't--isn’t worth it--isn’t _him_.

He tucks the knives back in before fully pulling them out, feels his stomach sink and his bones grow heavy.

And this time it is Misaki who hollers after him, throws taunts while his back is turned. "You  _have_ gone soft. _Coward._ " 

There's something increasingly frantic in his voice that stings but that old animal instinct also thrills a part of Fushimi. He's looking for a fight, Fushimi knows. His King his dead and he needs something to channel that towards. Fushimi half wants to let him, out of force of habit, out of sympathy, out of loathing (and, yes, out of love; it's complicated--it is  _always_ _going to be_ complicated).

"What a fucking disappointment," Misaki jeers, and Fushimi wants to turn around but if he turns around he'll turn to stone.

There is still a part of him that wants to turn back and knock him to the ground because it would be a reminder that he's still real, that he was real, _that they were real._

There is still a part of him that's sixteen and lost and fixated. On good days, he likes to think he's put it to rest, six feet deep like so much else, but it rears its head every now and then and it's rearing its head _now_ because Misaki has, above all, always been able to call to it like a siren.

It's the part that wants to say:  _Come on, Misaki. He's dead now and so is his clan. We can be the way we were again, together again, the way we used to be--_

Still, despite that voice in his head, despite the part that would still follow him anywhere, anywhere, _anywhere,_  despite the way his feet still want to turn around and kiss him because  _you saved me over and over and over again_  and despite the days where Fushimi still feels like he owes him something if not everything, will never stop feeling like he owes him  _everything_ , he is--

not that person anymore--

realizes he does not want to be that person anymore.

He'd still die for Misaki, easily, in the blink of an eye, but he also wants to live. For himself. For a change.

 _I loved you_ , he thinks.  _I will probably always, always love you._

_But I am also glad I left._

 

*

 

("You know you'll have to leave me first," Hidaka had told him once and it had haunted him for days and for nights after.

He's almost certain it was said in the context of some joke gone haywire. He'd smiled when he'd said it, laughed even. Still, there was this brutal kind of sincerity in it that carved away into Fushimi's chest. It was overwhelming, more than a little dizzying. It was too much faith put in him by putting next to no faith in him, not directly, and this was just one of the ways Hidaka got under his skin.

"Haven't you heard? I'm good at that." Fushimi had shot back, wry, weary, so tired of it, of everything, possibly of leaving too.

And then, "But I told you before, didn't I? I do better on my own." It was the same old refrain, again and again. Here, more likely, it was a reminder to and for himself, once again for good measure lest he forget.

Even so, Fushimi had turned in his arms like a study in contradiction, kissed him, soft then sound, breathed into it and drawn it out, and it had been everything he had not been able to say: 

_On my own, it's safe; on my own, no one can leave, can't change a thing, can't touch me, can't--_

Except Hidaka had broken the thought when he’d kissed him back, arched into it with his whole body, his whole heart.

 _I'll never leave,_  Hidaka had said into it, with his mouth and his hands and the burn between them, both spoken and unspoken so effortlessly that it was unwinding and disorienting.  _Cross my heart, I'll never leave._ )

 

*

  
He does not see Hidaka the night of the fight. Or the night after. They pass each other during the workday of course, and the division is busy enough that there's no time to let it hang in the air between them. It keeps up until the third day and when there aren't ample distractions and they are finally faced with one another early in the evening an otherwise empty office.

Hidaka almost startles when the can of iced coffee makes contact with his desk. 

When he tracks the hand holding the can up to its owner though, he smiles, and that's a reaction Fushimi had never realized he had taken for granted until he'd gone some days without it.

"Look," Fushimi starts, because he's never been good at asking for what he needs or offering to give out what he may need to. "About--"

Hidaka sits back in his chair and exhales. "It's not a big deal. We don't have to talk about it," he says, so obviously giving Fushimi an out that it would maybe be a little infuriating if it wasn't also what Fushimi hoped for. Or, at least, what he thought he'd hoped for right up until the moment it was in the air.

Fushimi wants to say: _Good, then let's not_. What he says instead is, "Either it's not a big deal or it is, and we're going to ignore it. Pick one." 

"Look," Hidaka says, "I know it's none of my business."

"You're--" Fushimi pauses. "We're. I don't know. Something apparently. So I suppose it might be, a little bit anyway. Now spit it out."

Hidaka grins, seemingly in spite of himself. "We're _something_ , are we? You've never--" he shakes his head, seemingly flustered. "Let's get out of here first and then we can pretend to have a sensible conversation, preferably away from CCTV."

The conversation doesn't happen for an hour or so after, mostly because when he finally gets Hidaka into his room, the last thing he wants to use his mouth for is stringing together words, not when there are other, far better options.

"Hey," Hidaka says, once he's caught his breath. "I'm gonna ask because you said you were okay with it but...you were friends, right? The best of friends. Then why?"

"It's who I am," Fushimi says, unthinking and unguarded. "I destroy what I touch before it destroys me."

There's a chill in the air and a silence that follows but his leg's still thrown across Fushimi's hip and his hand is still curled into his hair. He shows no signs of retreat and does not by any means withdraw. Sometimes, this in itself is enough to make some innately righteous part of Fushimi unfurl.

 _Where is your self-preservation,_ he thinks, almost furious. _You should know better, give more of a damn about your own heart._

When Hidaka speaks, it's so quiet that Fushimi would miss it if he weren't paying attention. "How long till you destroy me?"

It's part-flirting and part-sincere and all of it makes Fushimi feel like something is shattering inside him. There's the looming sense of inevitability again, of guilt before a fall, and Fushimi wants to kiss him and kick him out of his bed, all at once. _Everything,_ all at once.

He settles for the former, says, "That's the burning question, isn't it?" 

(He doesn't say--has never said--that this was part of why it had taken them so long to begin with, why he'd initially pushed so hard against this, until he could no longer fight his own selfishness in wanting it, until he caved.

He doesn't say: _I had hoped that I could have spared you, hoped you could have saved yourself._

Or that: _You still can. You still can.)_

 


	3. (know my faults but i can't) hide them

 

Sometimes, Hidaka looks at him, too warm, too sincere, and it's a look that says,  _I would not want to take away anything from you that makes you who you are._

Sometimes, in his less guarded moments, particularly after the nights where his dreams chase him to wakefulness with voices from all the other lives he has now disowned, Fushimi meets his eyes and wants to say back:  _I kind of wish you could. Kind of wish you would._

 

*

 

 

Still, sometimes Hidaka says the stupidest fucking things and it makes Fushimi's blood run cold.

There's a day when he outdoes himself and ruins a perfectly spectacular morning with: 

“If I told you I loved you would it just make you uneasy?”

And Fushimi glares at him until he can't anymore, until he has to throw the covers and get out of bed and create physical distance and go  _away away away._ It's only when he makes it inside the shower that he feels like he can breathe again.

Even then, when the water hits him, he crouches low to keep his head close to his knees, to keep it from spinning and from feeling more than a little ill.

When he finally returns to his room, Hidaka is perched at the corner of his bed, half-dressed, and looking a little sheepish. "Sorry," he says. "I guess that answers--I mean-- _sorry!_  I run my mouth in the mornings. That was stup--" 

“ _Don't_ ,” Fushimi grits out, and it's not angry, not anymore anyway. It’s just. He can't deal with it right now, might never be able to. It feels like a weight in his chest if he lets himself think about it, on top of everything that's sitting there already.

 _I can't carry it,_  he thinks,  _can hardly carry myself._

“I'm sorry,” Hidaka repeats, softer, as he stands and readies himself to leave. "Just wanted you to know, but that was probably selfish." 

Fushimi grabs the hem of his half-buttoned shirt and huffs, "You? Selfish?" before he turns to face him fully and does up the rest of Hidaka's buttons. "Anyway, you could try to look less like you enjoy your walk of shame from my room in the morning."

Hidaka chuckles close to his ear, kisses the shell of it and says, before he leaves, "I'd have to feel ashamed first."

 

 

*

 

 

(Later, much later, the first of many times, Fushimi will ask:  _Why?_

Hidaka will say:  _Why not? What's wrong with loving you?_

And Fushimi will laugh, a chill in it, and he will not know where to even begin with that.)

 

 

*

 

 

There are days when he looks at the Captain and looks at Awashima and wonders how they do it, how they tolerate it. They carry it too in their own hearts, he knows, loss and resentment and the toll of unfairness with the cards that were handed to them and yet, they still trust each other implicitly, carry everyone on their shoulders without a sound or the slightest indication that the burden is a heavy one to bear.

There are days when the light hits just right and Fushimi remembers that the Captain is not just their Captain; he is a man and a King and he has had to wash blood off his hands and burn away parts of his own heart and watch the ashes blow in the wind.

Still, he manages to smile and sometimes, somehow, it is still sincere. Still, he remains human.

It's admirable in some ways. It is absolutely terrifying in others.  

There are days when the light hits just right and he can see the softness in Awashima's face, hear it in her voice. She doesn't dare let it linger long but, on occasion, when it's just her and the Captain, she drops her guard a little, lets herself exhale a little, and not all of it seems accidental.

It makes Fushimi wonder if maybe there are other answers and other universes he still does not know. Perhaps, there are still parts of their hearts that have not yet been burnt away. Perhaps, there is hope then for people like him.

The air and the sky and the world around him feels strangely kind on those days.

 

 

*

 

 

He means to do it in almost-glimpses. Actually, that's a lie. He means to not really do it at all.

What happens instead is that there's an evening when they're back after a thirty-hour mission that ended with half a family dead and the other half disbanded and on the run from a strain that had managed to evade them until the twenty-seventh hour. The Captain had ordered them to leave for the night although Fushimi knew without knowing that he himself was still out there, watching over the city from a rooftop, maybe with the Lieutenant at his side, piecing together the aftermath. Once, Fushimi would have been beside him. At times, he wonders if it's wrong that he isn't. He'd been injured but not badly enough to stop or be deterred, but then the fatigue was something else and caught up with them. For all that clansmen were above the average human, they were hardly worth their weight in power in the face of a King.

Partly, it's the fatigue and partly the frustration of being more human than not, and partly he's still -- they are _all still_ \-- reeling a little from watching and hearing Kamo call his daughter in the van on the way back and breaking down over the phone.

And partly it's because he's always much more susceptible to the memories when his physical stores are low, that instead of attempting to sleep, he starts off saying, "My old man was an asshole." 

Hidaka's eyes narrow briefly but he remains quiet.  

The rest tumbles out in bits and pieces before Fushimi can quite stop himself. 

And then, Hidaka's eyes _change_.

"Fuck him," Hidaka says, slow, deliberate. " _Fuck. Him._ "

Fushimi sometimes forgets how sensitive he is, how horribly empathetic he can be. Except, this makes him upset like Fushimi's never seen him. No talk of violent strains or the bullet that killed his precious Kusuhara has ever set him on edge like this. 

Misaki had been the one who was around for some of that part of his life and known whatever he knew from being there. Otherwise, Fushimi had never really told anyone, not in so many words, and so, had never known what to expect. He does not know if this would have even made the list of possibilities, does not know how he feels about any of it.

"He's dead," Fushimi says wearily, feels a little like he's looking at the scene from outside of his own body.

" _Good,_ " Hidaka says. "Dead and gone and not here anymore. Not around you and not a part of you."

Fushimi can't explain but there’s a sudden inexplicable moment where he has to force himself to sit still, to fight the urge to wrap his hands around Hidaka's throat, to not get up and leave, to not cry out: _You still don't know a fucking thing about me_.

He has to fight the urge to not _hurt_ someone in this way or that out of pure reflexive _need,_  to not hurt himself because it was easy, always easy, or easier at least. 

In the back of his head, Misaki's voice echoes clear. _Saru,_  it says. _You're--you're not--_

And then Niki's piercing laughter rings louder, even after all these years, like a force he can't--feels like he won't ever be able to overcome, because it will find him, chase him through time and space and that laughter will find him, that face will find him, will become him.

And Fushimi would much sooner, much rather run his own saber through his own heart. 

"What is it that you want," Fushimi asks faintly, "from me?" He realizes here that he may be feeling a little feverish, a little delirious, more than a little unlike himself. It's been that kind of day, he knows. It's catching up with him. He needs to stop, needs to sleep. It will be better in the morning, everything.

"I don't know," says Hidaka. "Just you." He runs a hand through Fushimi's hair.  "I didn't know him but I know you, and you're not him. You're not anything like him. You're here with everyone and you mean so much to everyone and they mean so much to you." 

"I do better on my own," Fushimi says, unthinking, even if it feels stale on his tongue, feels like a far-off memory.

"Do you?" Hidaka says, not really much of a question in it. 

Fushimi looks at him, narrows his eyes. "You're really something," he says, and is promptly cut off by his own yawn. "Don't take it as a compliment. It's not always a compliment." 

"I'll take what I can get," Hidaka says, the tension in his face easing up a little. 

 

 

*

 

 

"Look, it's just," Fushimi says, the next morning when Hidaka's halfway out of his room. His voice sounds faint and distant to his own ears. "I'm just..."

And he doesn't quite know where to go from there. He doesn't know how to fix it. Doesn't even know what's broken to begin with, or actually, doesn't know if he's ever known anything that wasn't imperfect and fractured for most of his life.

And then there's _this_ and it's nearly beyond his comprehension half the time.

Hidaka gives him a tired smile, crosses the small space between them and sits on the edge of Fushimi's bed. "You know you have all the time in the world to figure that out."

He looks as if he'll come closer but doesn't. 

Fushimi bites the inside of his cheek, tries to stave off the vague taste of disappointment when Hidaka only touches his face and stands up, steps away.

 

 

*

 

 

He knows that his mother didn't love his father.

His mother may have loved someone, somewhere, elsewhere, but it wasn't his father. His father, on the other hand, lacked the mere capacity to love.

Fushimi knew both subjectively and objectively that Niki was a piece of shit. At some point, he thinks that he might have sworn to himself that he would be so much more than that. In some version of his garbled childhood mind, _more_  might have meant _better,_  but somewhere along the way, the semantics got lost and simplified _more_ into _greater_ into _superlative_  until he realized he was well on his way into becoming a bit of what he'd hated, just  _more_.

The irony didn't rattle him in the least at first. Survival was survival _was survival_  after all.

When you were on your own with ghosts for company, you took what you could and you took and you took and you didn't look back because you knew what happened to those that looked back. No, he was not going to turn to salt or stone. To a puddle of blood on the floor, maybe, on the asphalt of some forgotten back alley or concrete floor of a warehouse if he had to, and that he could stomach, but he was not going to be frozen, incapable, left for dead, not by someone else's undoing, not without a fight.

This is the point where it would've been nice and clean and easy to say: _and then he met Misaki,_ but then, that would have been a gross oversimplification.

Yes, he met Misaki. Yes, Misaki saved him from several circles of hell. Yes, he owed Misaki everything,  _everything_. Even so, certain things in this universe are simply immutable, and Fushimi was, and Fushimi would be, and whether it became a self-fulfilling prophecy because he believed this about himself and dreamed it into reality, he would not know.

Regardless, people did not change. He could not afford to believe that they did because if they did, if they inherently even could, then that meant--well, a lifetime's worth of dissonance, the possibility that it could have been different, and he doesn't know what he would even begin to do with  _that._

So yes, he had always thought that his father had lacked the mere capacity to love. _Mere_. Like it was something small, easy, intuitive and obvious.

And here was Fushimi, aiming for superlatives.

So yes, he had met Misaki, but he was still who he was. 

He didn't really think about capacities until later, much later, when he had destroyed whatever he and Misaki were to one another.

Perhaps, it was harder to decipher cause and effect and he had ruined it all as an act of love: a mercy kill.

Out of love for his friend? Love for himself? Mercy for _whom,_  he doesn't know.

The narrative changes depending on the weather.

It didn't matter besides. _Doesn't_ matter besides. People were who they were and Fushimi was not someone who softened or settled or stopped moving or fundamentally put someone else before him, not for long.

Sure, he'd bend but for how long? Eventually it would break, as all things did, and what then?

 _Look, Misaki,_ he'd thought back then. 

_Look at what you did. Look at what you made me do._

Fushimi was not capable of keeping it in in in because Fushimi was who Fushimi was and he never claimed to be good for anyone.

Even Misaki, golden ray of sun Misaki, lone-light-in-the-pit-that-was-his-life-Misaki, could unfortunately not have changed that.

 

 

*

 

 

The next night when they are next to one another, there's nothing except failed attempts at sleep, and Hidaka takes his hand under the covers and holds on to it tight.

Fushimi's fingers twitch but do not squeeze back. Not yet. In a minute or so, they will.

 _Stay with me_ , Hidaka wants to say. _I can't promise you'll never be afraid again but you will never be alone._

He can't manage it with the right words so he tries it with the shape of his hands against Fushimi's neck, the route of his fingers from jawline to hairline to the curl of them in his hair, against his skin, tries it with silence, with his lips pressed close against Fushimi's forehead, open against Fushimi's mouth.

He wants to whisper reassurances but they all seem to have run dry and, regardless, nothing feels like it will suffice.

 

 

*

 

 

"It's me," is what he says, ultimately, because inevitable is _inevitable_ and maybe he's still too much of a coward to run his saber into his heart but he's not going to run it through Hidaka's.

Or maybe, this is what he is doing now, and it just depends on the definition. Everything is so fucking subjective in the end.

"I'm sorry," Fushimi says and means it _and means it_.

_It's me. I am this. I am always going to be this._

"So this is it," Hidaka says, his smile is brittle, an unusual twist in it. They both know that there is no way in which this was a surprise. It's been in the air, the threat of it, all along. Hidaka persisted in spite of it. They both know. They both have always known. 

"I know what you're doing," Hidaka says. He's still not angry, could never be vindictive or cruel. He has every right to be. He has more than every right to be.

Fushimi doesn't know why. _I wasted your time_ , he thinks. _If I were you, I would be livid._ "And what is it that I'm doing?"

"Breaking my heart to spare me from yourself," he says, even though his voice isn't quite right, still caught a little bit in his throat and smoothing itself out. "Oldest trick in the book." He's trying to laugh, and Fushimi wants to stop him, wants to kiss him to stop him and also kiss him just to kiss him, but this isn't like last time. This isn't him setting fire to his skin, to his past, to his best and oldest friendship; this isn't him reveling in Misaki's wrath.

This is setting fire to a possibility, a future maybe, a hypothetical that could have been more in another universe but can't survive this one because of who he is.

If Hidaka breaks, Fushimi is not sure what he is going to do. He does know that he would rather break him this way then the other way, the one that comes after years and years and has little to no hope for recovery, not for anyone.

"You love me," Hidaka says. "I know you do."

Fushimi swallows, says nothing.

Hidaka doesn't beg him, doesn't ask a thing of him. He says, "I believe in you. I know you'll figure it out. I'll be here when you do."

Fushimi wants to punch him in the face a little, wants to throw him out of his endless stupidity and all of his hugely misplaced conviction in humanity (hates that he _still_  wants to kiss him even more).

 

 


	4. i wanted to give you everything

 

 

The next morning, he wakes with this bone-deep sort of weariness and part of his mind screaming:  _You can't do this. You cannot possibly win._

It's the same part that belongs neither here nor there, damned if you do and damned if you don't, can't make up its mind, thinks it knows best, knows how to protect himself, but he's not so sure there's a way to do that anymore, not in a way that will let him rest.

It's tiring work, self preservation. Exhausting, really.

To top it all off, Hidaka still smiles at him like  _the sun_ , and it still makes his heart stutter.

No, he hasn't found the middle-ground between security and contentedness.

No; not yet.

Not outside those few stolen moments, not since he was younger, more reckless with himself and his heart.

 

 

*

 

 

Regardless of whether one is at HOMRA or SCEPTER4, no one really brings up the Ashinaka incident beyond vague references acknowledging the loss of a life and the calamity averted.

Whatever records of HOMRA members were gathered and available had always been accessible to this division of Annex 4 given their level of security clearance. The files are metaphorically thinner on some, or sparser, if one is speaking digitally, as is the case for Kusanagi Izumo. This was also the case for Totsuka Tatara. There is some information on where they were born, their education, some scattered medical records. 

There is only one file from HOMRA protected in a folder labeled RESTRICTED ACCESS and a caption of DECEASED. The latter is new. The former is not. 

Fushimi has thought of hacking into it but part of him thinks he already knows what he will find and another part of him feels that it would be crossing a line that would fall outside the professional realm, approach something like personal.

Munakata Reisi is a man of secrets. That he killed Suoh Mikoto to save thousands of lives on one winter day is not a secret. That it is slowly, literally killing him in turn--well, Fushimi's not huge on the whole marks of respect but he wonders how long he can pretend it's a secret in the place of one. 

 

 

*

 

 

He knocks on the Captain's office door on a government holiday. It's likely out of line because even if the Captain is here, it's not a workday and hence there is no official business for either of them to attend to unless he's called in.

When the voice gives him permission to enter, Fushimi rolls his eyes and thinks, _Of course, he's here,_ before he lets himself in and is met with the Captain's best inquisitive administrator face.

"I've been thinking," Fushimi says, before there are any empty formalities in the air but also before he loses his nerve. "I owe you a bunch, don't I?"

When Munakata folds his hands on the table and scrutinizes him, Fushimi stands tall and meets his eyes. He has, over time, become much less fazed by that look.

"You do honest work," Munakata says. "You are entirely responsible for yourself here, whether it is your successes or your failures. I've been fortunate to generally see the former though." 

Fushimi swallows. "And what if one day I disappoint you there?" The twist of his mouth is sharp, and now, he looks at a fixed point on the wall beside the Captain's chair. Throne. Whatever.

"I doubt that," his king says. "And regardless, we are all human."

"Except you," says Fushimi.  "All of us except the King."

The Captain does not confirm nor deny this, simply asks, "And what brought this upon, may I ask?"

Fushimi looks at him then, says, "Don't get yourself killed." 

If this startles Munakata, he does not show it. The only perceptible change is the quiet way his eyes soften. 

"One generally tries not to, Fushimi-kun, but I appreciate the sentiment all the same."

 

 

*

 

 

It's the little things they took for granted that feel the most palpable now, the smallest of gestures. There was something of an unspoken rule where they hardly touched in the public sphere but there were always looks, warm from Hidaka, careful from Fushimi, a kind of assurance and reassurance.

There were things they would leave on each other's desks. Iced coffees and granola bars and cryptic two-word post-it notes.

Hidaka would send him messages and pictures grasping at this or that thing he saw during his day that Fushimi would roll his eyes at and then reply to one time in ten, if even that, but they sat with him anyway.

And then, the anticipation that he didn't even realize he'd carry until it washed over him at the end of the day. It was silly, really. He'd never really had to wait. Hidaka was just there, a quiet burst of warmth that lingered long after, always there and near in this way or that even when he was nowhere near at all. Fushimi couldn't quite remember the last time he'd had that. Or perhaps, the worst part was that he sort of could. He'd never thought that he'd have it back, not like this, so similar and yet so different than before.

And now, it's not that he's exactly absent but _far_ and in a way that physical nearness cannot overcome. There's ample opportunity for them to sit across one another but Fushimi does not take it.

He lives with the knowledge that he created the distance but it is also what he is so certain that he needs, even if he finds himself checking his phone, filing through the alert messages and the policy change emails and then wonder what he was even looking for.

(Once, he'd found himself in the corridor of the dorms that led a certain way except he'd been unable to go any further in that direction, had turned around after all.)

Hidaka is, of course, still maddeningly kind, still friendly, still _concerned._  

"I hope you're eating well," he jibes once. It tempts Fushimi to snap something sharp back at him but he truthfully has no bite for it.

 _You're right here_ , he thinks. _You're right here and I--_ He stays silent.

It's a dull pang for the most part except the moments where it sparks, sharp, electric, when he catches Hidaka smiling at Gotou or any number of other people.

Or when the Captain and Lieutenant share a look (--and they are also partners, aren't they? the thought floods him with _something_  not entirely unpleasant but also hits like a gust of cold air. _You chose this_ , he has to remind himself.)

Or when he's trying to sleep before a mission and his room and bed are freezing cold and part of him hates it and _hates it_ because wasn't this the feeling he had tried to rid himself of? Wasn't this no different than the same old trap, different game, his traitorous heart that he couldn't cut out? It would be his undoing, his own downfall, would kill him in _slow agony_  one way or another.

And then there's the part that's just tired and alone, left breathing in the ghost-scent of hair product and standard issue soap on his pillow.

 

 

* 

 

 

There's another day, the sun shimmering by the harbour and Fushimi's on the job, chasing the tail of another strain, when he runs into him.

It is literally _always_  the least convenient time but, of course, there is no such thing as a convenient time when it's Misaki.

Something about him is different this time. Misaki is always rough around the edges but fluid in his moves, glides with his board with a grace Fushimi's come to hate, mostly because he still doesn't hate it as much as he would like.

But, today, there's none of that. He's wild-eyed and desperate and his movements are all jagged.

He hisses, " _Come on!"_   

And it's code for something else, something Fushimi doesn't know or isn't letting himself remember.

Fushimi lunges forward and they end up on the ground with Yata looming over him. Neither really manages to get a proper hit in but end up with hands fisted in each other's collars, snarling, exhausted.

And something _snaps_ because Yata lets him go--lets _himself_ go, and drops his head, forehead hitting the spot above Fushimi's collarbone.

There's nothing here that's louder than the sound of him breathing and it's shaky and uneven and Fushimi doesn't look at him, can't look at him, can't--

"HOMRA's broken, Saru. Isn't that is what you wanted?" Yata says, and he's so unlike his usual relentless self that it throws the world a little off its axis. "This is what you wanted and now you got it. Are you happy now?"

Fushimi doesn't know what he wanted, never really knew what he wanted, other than _Misaki_ , for so much of his life, other than _to be with Misaki,_ to the point where it swallowed him whole.

That apparently was not in the stars for them, not for very long. Quite honestly, it doesn't feel like it will ever be, and he hates that just when he was _starting to be able to live with that--_

" _No_ ," he says, his own voice failing him. "No, I didn't. I never wanted that."

He curls a hand in Misaki's hair--Misaki who is laying broken right alongside the shambles of his precious HOMRA--and does not know how this is what they've become.

Misaki lifts his head and he has always, always worn his heart on his sleeve. Fushimi used to make fun of him for it, also used to envy it a little, but he doesn't envy any of it anymore. He just wants to make it stop, just wants to make it go away. 

He doesn't know how it happens, who starts it, but his hand is still in Misaki's hair when he's kissing him.

It's not anything at all like what he thought it would be. There's none of the burn of the fallout, all the years lost and the gaping chasm between them now.

No; he just feels weary, endlessly weary, feels like he's failed the person who carried him out of the dark so very long ago because he'll never be able to return the debt. He won't even be able to touch it.

Misaki pushes off and away from him, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and stands. He does not help Fushimi up but watches and waits until he too stands.

"It's not everything," Fushimi says, trying to steady his voice, "King and clan."

Misaki barks a laugh. "You can say that because you still have one." 

"I used to wish," says Fushimi, faintly, "that you'd left with me."

"You never fucking asked."

Fushimi smiles, a bitter twist of his lips, tries not to let this gut him and presses on instead with, "If I had, would you have?"

"I," Misaki hesitates. "I don't know." looks as if he's saying and now we'll never know. 

Fushimi shakes his head. "Well, it doesn't matter now."

They are not the same people anymore and it's a tragedy and a half but no matter how much of his imagination Fushimi has wasted ruminating over the possibility of it, he knows now that there is no going back. He also knows that that's okay. Neither of them can apologize for who they are and mean it.

He's never had much of an issue with dishonesty, not even with Misaki, not when push came to shove, but he's also tired of lying now, most of all to himself.

 

 

*

 

 

It was early spring, over a year ago, when Hidaka had said, "I think you should come out with us to the flower viewing."

And Fushimi had instinctively scoffed and refused.

Even so, for some reason unbeknownst to him, he had gone anyway.

He'd sat alone, some distance away from the Lieutenant, until Hidaka had walked on over and sat with him.

And this had made Fushimi bristle.

"I didn't come because of you," he'd very nearly hissed.

Hidaka had smiled and said, "I know. That's fine. I'm still glad you came."

And in a moment of utter thoughtlessness, Fushimi had asked, "Why? What does it even matter?"

Hidaka had worn a serene smile under the shower of petals as he looked out at the trees, at the people. Fushimi still remembers this. Could not forget it if he tried.

"It matters," he had said, "because we're--"

"If you give me that comrades nonsense one more time I swear, I'll--" 

"But we are," Hidaka had said so simply, like it magically uncomplicated everything.

"We're not  _friends_ ," Fushimi had countered, a briskness in a voice, no room to allow for misunderstandings.

And Hidaka had turned to face him then, laughed a little. "It's not the same thing though. When you fight alongside somebody, you don't have to like them, but there is a respect for them and what they stand for. You shoulder it together, and it is a different kind of bond. Sure, you can become friends with your comrades but you don't have to."

Fushimi had exhaled, slow. It was probably the first time Hidaka had sounded a little older than he looked, than he acted.

And there had been petals everywhere, falling as they spoke, adding to the sea of pink. Some got caught in Hidaka's hair and there had been that split-second urge to flick them away, even if more out of irritation than anything. 

"What does that have to do with watching flowers together?"

"Nothing, I guess," said Hidaka. "Or, everything," and he'd smiled with half a shrug, looking far more enigmatic than Fushimi had liked. He'd already had enough of the Captain speaking in riddles. 

"You've got stuff in your hair."

"Hm?" Hidaka had swiped at his head, managed to shake just about half the petals out. "Good now?"

Fushimi had sighed and weighed his options. He could have just let Hidaka go on with his life looking like a loser with sakura petals in his hair. It would hardly have been the end of the world, or--

Hidaka's eyes had widened as Fushimi's hand went to his hair, a brisk movement of his wrist and then it had been over.

"Thanks," Hidaka had said, sounding a little faint.

And Fushimi had clicked his tongue, brushed the petals off of his own clothes, and had gotten to his feet before he'd had time to think too much of it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was supposed to be a longer chapter but then i wanted to finish something in time for baby trainwreck's birthday and the other parts likely fit better later anyway.


End file.
